[mburbank]

I disagree entirely, and this is one of the ways in which I think this administration is very different from previous ones.

I think W is malleable putty, a figurehead at best. I think actual decision making is made by Chenney, Rumsfeld and is filtered by Rove for political impact. If that triumvirate actually picked a plan from the A-Z lsit on the table, I would feel safer. I think they are meglomaniacal and believe they are far wiser than anyone in the Pentagon, which is why they installed their own flacks in critical positions and created entire new offices to shape intelligence to fit policy.

I think they picked an alphabetized plan and immeditely began to retool it as if they had the slightest idea what they were doing. Career officers played ball and got promoted or didn't and got shitcanned.

How else could you possibly explain a total failure to plan for anything but a best case scenario? How else could you explain Bremmer disbanding the entire Iraqi army? The American army has a proud tradition of doing what it's civillian leaders order, and I think it's a very valuable , perhaps even a critical structure. But one relies on a secretary of state who does not radically overestimate himself, and a President who will fire the secretary if he does. I think, in this respect, we are seriously fucked.